Longevity of Religious Orders

The Carmelite Order has been reformed several times, most famously by two Spanish saints during the Counter-Reformation. The Minorites have been reformed more often than that. Their peers, the Dominicans, have needed attention over the years, but less. The Benedictines have had less explicit reform, but have been indirectly revitalized by other new communities follow a more severe interpretation of the Rule of Saint Benedict. And then there are the Jesuits....

At what point is a religious order or community necessary? When the conditions for its inception by the Church fade, ought the order fade, too? 

Years ago a friend of mine was in novitiate for the Dominicans in the eastern province of the United States. A mutual acquaintance asked why they were called the Order of Preachers. I explained that this eponym is in fact their proper name. During the Middle Ages one had to be licensed by the local bishop to preach in a church and sermons were quite rare. The Dominicans received their permission directly from the pope, which permitted these educated, ambulatory priests to oppose the Cathar heresy with great militancy. He asked if all priests can preach now. Yes, I said. Are there Cathars anymore? No, I said. Then what do they do?

Saint Ignatius founded the Society of Jesus along similar lines, using his own unique skills to service the Church in combat against the reigning heresy of the day. Yet, there are still protestants and anti-Christian governments. Does this necessitate the aggressive orthodoxy and militant attitude of the Society of Jesus in our age?

One might be tempted to compared religious orders to government bureaucracies, seeing them as self-confirming institutions that perpetuate their own relevance long after their immediate need has passed. The Dominicans and the Social Security program have some superficial parallels.

It would be wrong, however, not to consider the orders in their integrity and only look at God's blessing of their work in historical context. Eastern Christianity has comparatively few religious orders, just freestanding communities following certain sets of traditions. Most monks, in one way or another, follow the ways of Saint Basil: work eight hours, pray eight hours, sleep eight hours. A few monasteries have the Hesychast emphasis that pervaded what Taft called the "final synthesis" of Greek Christianity before the fall of Byzantium. In the deserts of Egypt a monastery follows the way of Saint Anthony in conjunction with the cave-dwelling anchorites. There is no strict "rule", no international conference of delegates answering to a superior general, and no dicastery for religious life. They also did not come into existence after an outbreak of heresy, although the Athonite communities rose to prominence after the Hesychast movement. There is something inherently durable in the manner of Christian life found in these communities that is not bound up in the personalities of their founders

The religious communities which have had the least "reform" or on-going maintenance are the ones least related to the personalities of their founders. Biographical details and acts of Saint Benedict survive through Gregory the Great and the monastic traditions, although little about the man's temperament and personality survive. A monk following the rule looks to Benedict as his father, but not necessarily his model. The Divine Office and the weekly recitation of the 150 psalms is his model, to disappear into work, be it manual or spiritual work. Ora et labora could well be Orare est laborare for a Benedictine. It is an ideal to diminish the place of the individual and, through prayer and labor, augment the place of Christ.

Our Dominicans have been slightly less durable than the Benedictines, if only because of their necessary proximity to "the world." Though no longer uniquely situated as great preacher among few, their ubiquity, academic affiliations, and penchant for study have elongated their place in the Church long after the death of Saint Dominic de Guzmán. The Dominicans have produced such varied saints as Catherine of Sienna, Martin de Porres, Vincent Ferrer, and the Common Doctor, each a saint in their own right and an instrument of God's grace in the world.

Perhaps less apparent in these excellent, enduring qualities are the Minorites, the friars who are supposed to live the life of Saint Francis. It does not aid the Minorites, in their three iterations, that for two centuries our society has re-imagined Francis as a proto-socialist, tree-hugging, animal-loving, limp-wristed vagrant. A man so uniquely blessed by God, so idiosyncratic in his ways could only help attract followers who desired the same holiness Francis possessed, but there was only one Francis. Even in the Saint's own lifetime his order was growing in scope far beyond the narrow mendicant brotherhood he initially envisaged. The Minorites have produced saints, surely, and many lesser known friars and sisters who has striven to life the Gospel with the unguarded simplicity Francis did, but it has also produced a multitude of ebullient cretins who seek to replicate a perceived quietism and spontaneity wrongly attributed to Francis. At the cost of this aesthetic comes the integrity of the liturgy and the body of doctrine, the two things most dear to living Christian life; someone called Dan Horan is, in some deranged way, the heir to the Fraticelli. The Franciscans of the Immaculate may have prefaced a revival of genuine Franciscan life, but that endeavor proved too much for our day.

Orders and communities hopefully receive the blessing of Our Lord in their own time and continue to act as a blessing on the Church in our time. The most successful of these are built on eternal needs and the received wisdom of the Church's liturgy and discipline. Sometimes a charism is simply no longer needed. Sometimes it matures into a more lasting contribution. And sometimes it festers.

I know you're all wondering: should the Society of Jesus be suppressed? Clement XIV may have been wrong in 1773, but the world would have been better off if they stayed dead.